Marked Fur Murder (8 page)

They'd tell the story about Damon, the aquarium, and the tank of laughing gas. Or Damon and the seventeen strippers. Or Damon, the hot tub, and the distillery—that one has a deranged plumber in it, or at least one so high on cocaine he was arrested naked on top of a city bus.

Taken together, they formed a mythology of the epically wasted. But when I thought about Damon, none of those stories was the one that came to mind.

I thought about the time I found him hiding under his own bed.

It took me two hours to coax him out. He was convinced that his whole life was an elaborate practical joke conducted by a conspiracy of every person he'd ever known, and that they were about to reveal the punch line: He'd never been a success. Nobody had ever bought any of his albums, or played them on the radio. Every groupie he'd ever slept with had been paid to do so, and his friends were all actors.

He was completely, absolutely sure about all of this. His demeanor alternated between coldly lucid—he would list “facts” to support his case that almost made sense, or were at least hard to disprove—and bouts of hysterical weeping.

I'm not proud of how I finally got him out: I produced a bottle of gin and offered to have a drink with him, something I'd never done before. One drink turned into several—for him, anyway—and he finally calmed down and came back to himself. We never talked about it again, and two months later I was working for someone else.

It wasn't until he'd crawled out from under the bed that I saw he had a knife in his hand.

It was one of those wooden-handled, serrated-blade models you get when you order a steak from room service. Made for sawing through meat. A good choice if you wanted to hack through your own wrists … but there was a moment when he got to his feet, clutching that knife in his hand, when I was sure he was about to use it on me. When the madness was still in his eyes, and even he didn't know what he was going to do next. I remember that look well. It wasn't hostile or fearful or manic. It was just disconnected, like watching a car whose driver has vanished and is now drifting out of its own lane and toward oncoming traffic.

Had I just seen that same look on Theodora Bonkle's face?

 

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

Tango asked. She was eating at her bowl in the mansion's kitchen while I waited for Ben to finish receiving a grocery order at the back door.

Yep. Tearing along as if being chased by a muscular transgender mystery author and her two imaginary friends,
I replied.

Whiskey, nosing around for scraps on the floor, glanced my way. [Yes. It was extremely odd.]

[Cats, apparently.]

“At least dead ones,” I said out loud.

“Dead what?” asked Ben, walking up with a crate of produce in his arms. He set it down on the stainless steel of the table and started pulling leafy green things out of it.

“Cats,” I answered. I gave Ben a condensed version of the story while he unpacked groceries. “… and that's how I spent the last hour.”

Ben frowned. “I thought you were looking for Anna's killer.”

“I am. But accomplishing anything around here is always like juggling and reciting Shakespeare from memory while trying to run an obstacle course.”

His frown softened. “I'm sorry. I know how much you have to deal with. But this is my sister we're talking about.”

I went to him, put my arms around his waist. “Hey. I understand. This is important to me, too. I promise you, we'll get to the bottom of this. Just try to be patient, all right? And remember that you have a crack team of supernatural sleuths on the case?”

He looked into my eyes. No lightning crackling there right now, just a deep, rich brown. Like staring at chocolate, really. In more ways than one.

“Okay,” he said softly. “I trust you. You're the most capable person I know.”

.

Those luscious brown eyes rolled upward. “Sorry, Tango. Didn't mean to imply you weren't just as capable. Or not a person.”

[Yes, very clever. If wordplay were a benchmark of competence you'd surely be the envy of us all. Sadly, deeds tend to count for more than words.]

[I beg your pardon?]

[The use of esoteric terminology does little to refute my statement.]

“Okay,” I said loudly, “that's enough of that. We have a killer to catch, and we're not going to do it by calling each other names.” I paused. “What the hell is a groak, anyway?”

“There's an actual word for that?” Ben said. He gently broke my embrace and stepped over to one of the fridges.

[Fascinating. Your grasp of utterly useless knowledge is both impressive and extensive. Now can we get down to work, please?]

“That's not exactly fair,” said Ben. He pulled a pan full of chops out of the fridge and carried it over to the table. “I've never known Whiskey to eat garlic.”

“Is that what
nugatory
means?” I asked.

“No,
alliaphage.
” He picked up a knife and started trimming fat off the chops. “It's a word I learned when I became a chef.”

Tango licked one paw.

[Still highly inaccurate. Despite my post-living state, I have no romantic intentions toward the inanimate.]

Whiskey gave Tango a pitying look. [I yearn for the creation of feline psychoanalysis, so you can finally get the help you desperately need.]

“Oh?” I said. “Is that the
only
thing you're yearning for?”

[I don't understand what you're referring to.]

Whiskey stared at me accusingly. [You told her.]

“Who, me? What, you think when two females get together all they talk about is who's crushing on who? I think I'm offended.”

[That statement would carry more weight if being offended weren't how cats spent a third of their time. The other two-thirds they're asleep.]

[I'm not pining.]

“Oh, he eats, all right,” said Ben. He tossed a scrap of fat from the chops he was trimming in Whiskey's direction; Whiskey snatched it out of the air in one quick chomp.

[Thank you. While it's true I don't need to consume food, I can ingest the occasional morsel for pleasure or to help heal from injuries. As you well know.]

[Not as such.]

[I fail to see where this is going.]

“Not me,” Ben said. “Wish I did, though.”

Whiskey tried to sit a little straighter, which in some breeds would convey an increased sense of dignity. As a blue heeler, though, it just made him look perkier. [This conversation is both inappropriate and absurd. First of all, I am not “crushing” on anyone. Second of all, to reduce the emotion of love to a series of crude repetitive actions is to disrespect the profound, eternal force that underlies everything we do as Guardians of the Great Crossroads.]

He paused, gazing at us solemnly.

“Yeah, he's got it pretty bad,” I said.

“Oh, I'm sure he feels that's all beneath him.”

“Speaking as a fellow male,” said Ben, “can we knock off the teasing? It's not exactly fair.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Um,” I said. “That's an interesting view of the process, Tango.”

“Spikes?”

Ben sighed. “Spikes,” he said. “Don't ask me how I know this, but a male cat's anatomy has certain features you might not expect it to. Considering what its purpose is and where it goes.”

“Can we talk about something else, please?” I said. “I'm wincing so hard I think I may have sprained something.”

“Tango, please,” said Ben. “I think we're all wincing now.”

“Ben doesn't
have
spikes,” I said.

that's
a decent repair job.>

“Okay, I think it's time to take this show on the road,” I said.

“Please do,” said Ben. He gave me a quick kiss.

“C'mon, troops,” I sighed, and exited the kitchen with Whiskey at my heels and Tango padding along a few steps behind.

While it might seem strange to be trailed by both a dog and a cat, people will accept the most unusual behavior from animals by simply filing it under
that's so cute!
in their own brains. After a while, that particular file gets renamed
ordinary stuff I see every day,
and then it becomes more or less invisible.

That's how it works for the staff, anyway; the guests never stop marveling at it. Which can sometimes be useful, which is why I wanted both of them with me at the moment.

I found Hayden Metcalfe in the study. When I first met him my initial impression was of a tall, distinguished gentleman who dressed impeccably and looked at the world with a sort of amused disdain. The man I saw now, slumped in a wingback armchair and staring at the ashes in the fireplace, bore little resemblance. He was unshaven, his graying hair disheveled, dressed in the same track suit and running shoes he'd been wearing when he got the news early this morning. From the half-empty bottle of Napoleon Brandy beside him, it seemed he'd decided to try running without leaving his seat. Well, it worked for Damon Inferno—for a while, anyway. Hayden gave me no more than a cursory glance when I sat down opposite him, Whiskey dropping down to lie at my feet. Tango stalked to a corner of the room and curled up on an ottoman.

Sometimes I felt like the clerk in a mask store. Most of the people I've worked for have spent their entire lives constructing a facade—from their outward appearance to how they behave in public, there are layers and layers of carefully crafted personas that they wear to deal with others. But I get to see them when they take those masks off; I get to see them when they switch from one to another, or even advise them on which one they should wear. Sometimes the experience is touching, sometimes it's disappointing, often it's disturbing. One of the reasons I like working for ZZ so much is that her masks are designed to reveal, not conceal.

Hayden's mask had slipped right off his face. Gone was the casual composure, the easy smile, the confident gaze. What had replaced it was shock, disbelief, and anger; the grief he was keeping at bay with the booze, but the others he couldn't shake.

“Mr. Metcalfe?” I said. “Hayden?”

He blinked once, slowly, then looked at me again. “Yes?” he said. His voice was hoarse and unsure.

“How are you holding up?”

“How am I holding up?” He stared at me blearily and then lifted his glass and shifted his gaze to it. “Three sheets to the wind, my dear. Working on number four.”

Well, at least he could still talk. “I'm terribly sorry for your loss. Anything that I or ZZ can do, just ask.”

He took a gulp of his drink before answering. “Can you bring my wife back?” he said. “Can you go back in time and convince her that going for a late-night swim by herself was a bad idea? Failing that, can you locate the inventor of the hair dryer and throttle them in their damn crib?”

“Are you sure she was by herself?”

“What? Of course she was. I wasn't with her. Who else would have been?” His glare was more befuddled than angry.